Happy Holidays to all of you who've tried to help me this past month!
The heater finally arrived. Fed the wire through the machine and plugged it in. I had already taken everything apart and replaced all of the printer head pieces. It's brand new bowden, bowden clips, new peek, new aluminum block, new brass, new sensor. It was all assembled correctly and checked half a dozen times, because I've had lots of time waiting on parts. I had even disassembled the feed mechanism and double checked that it was all assembled correctly while waiting. Clips are all in place. Blue horseshoes are attached. After installing the heater, I ran through the calibration routine on the wiki to make sure it was aligned and the bed leveled.
So, I try to print a belt tensioner, because it's small. My Ultimaker lays down one layer, then part of another before it craps out and stops feeding filament. It had ground itself a half-moon shape into the side of the filament, but both ends of the bowden held firm, so the problem I had originally is fixed.
Still, from clean, brand new everything, it appears I got an instant plug. At that point, there was much foul language. I took the print head apart. There was only a tiny bit of plastic in the brass and nozzle, which I cleaned out. In fact, everything was relatively clean up to the white nylon piece that connects to the bowden. It was completely solid. Couldn't even tell where the holes were without a magnifying glass. (I was using Ultimaker brand white filament, which seems to be the same color as the nylon.) Tried getting the plastic out, but no luck. Finally, I put it into a vise and used a 3mm bit and my drill press. As usual, my bad luck held and the piece popped loose from the vise and got chewed. So, I assembled everything without the nylon piece. It actually worked better without it. It got a little further on the print before it stopped feeding. It still eventually plugged, though.
The sad part is, I can't even complete one print to make any parts that might help me get this damn thing working. I'm pretty fed up. At this point, It's been a month and I still don't have a single completed print. I'm not spending another $50 to ship another $8 piece and that wouldn't fix the plugging issue anyway. After spending over $3000 for nothing, I think I'm pretty much done with Ultimaker. Lesson painfully learned. If somebody with infinite patience wants to take this thing off my hands and fiddle with it until they get it to stop plugging over and over, I'm open to offers. I have the latest everything on it, some extra parts, and the extra Ulticontroller, too. I also regretfully bought the $200 NetFABB license, which I'm sure I'm stuck with.
Everybody I've talked to who has their Ultimaker working reliably has replaced the stock Ultimaker feed path with something different. Those who haven't replaced any part of the feed, are still getting plugs constantly. I just don't have the patience to clean out plugs 5 or 6 times a day while never completing an entire print. Doing it twice today with no improvement in plugging was enough.
Can anyone recommend a dependable printer with a large print volume and a stock feed mechanism which doesn't plug constantly?
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Ordered and paid for the parts yesterday, but still no shipment notice, and they already left for the day again. This means they went through a full work day after I ordered and they didn't ship it out. So, I won't see the parts until next week at this rate. That's one more week of useless printer. Ugh! Frustrating! :(
Update: Ordered Monday. Parts shipped on Thursday after I reminded them about my order on Wednesday. Had to remind them the first time I ordered parts, too. *sigh*
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